


Spies on the Prize: Prelude

by blessedharlot



Series: Spies on the Prize [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Flirting, Kissing, Latina Sharon Carter, Road Trips, Slice of Life, racebent Sharon Carter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-12 11:03:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9068833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedharlot/pseuds/blessedharlot
Summary: “That was it. It was over. He left the chess club. And… he left me.”

  Nat moaned in sympathy.
  “It broke my heart,” said Agent 13.
  “That’s brutal.”
  “That’s middle school. I listened to Jewel’s ‘Foolish Games’ on repeat for three days straight.” 
It's a first meeting for two great spies, both in need of a road trip.
There will be more Nat/Sharon road trip fun to come, but this story stands on its own as well.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nonbinaryromanoff](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nonbinaryromanoff).



> The following story takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just prior to the events of Iron Man 2. If dialogue has brackets around it, they’re speaking Spanish. 
> 
> This was originally written for the Sharon Carter Secret Santa exchange. Nonbinaryromanoff, I hope you enjoy!

**15 miles south of Tierras Prietas, Chihuahua, Mexico; early morning**

As Natasha rounded the corner, she watched the 12-inch-thick steel door at the far end of the hallway swing its last few inches and clang itself snugly into place, locking her in.

This was not the side she wanted to be on when that door closed.That was exit strategy number five crossed off her list, and her heart rate sped up just a bit.

She made a 180 to return the way she came, keeping her cover identity’s ditzy demeanor as she kept alert to her surroundings in the bunker. She realized in that instant that somebody hadn’t bought her story. 

Natasha cursed herself roundly for the failure. She must have been sloppy, and that was unforgivable. The fact that the job was meant to be two days long, and had lasted a week now was of little comfort. It still should have been a breeze to fool everyone here. At least the smart mark - whoever they were - would be busy a few moments more with the chaos she had created, and she had room to maneuver before she was found.

Her cover identity could only be forgiven another minute of aimless wandering, at best. Her thwarted escape attempts could easily start straining credulity in this slipshod - but still deadly - military environment. If Nat kept overstaying her welcome like this, she would soon be swept somewhere secret for a more intimate investigation, Nat was sure of it. And she would prefer to avoid that. The seemingly up-and-up mining operations covered an extensive project run by A.I.M., and those bad guys got creepy quick.

_ So _ , she thought.  _ Where to now? _ She’d only pre-planned the first four escape routes she'd tried. The fifth - the back door - had been a long shot.

At least Natasha had already accomplished her critical mission. She had the data. She could stay away from the nerve center, and avoid the major players, now all wrapped up in the decoy messes she left in the system. She could quietly slip out a side exit… just as soon as she found one that wasn't the laser mesh air vents, the water main whose pressure she couldn't currently access, the handful of reinforced windows, the now demolished loading dock, or the big back door.

_ Keep striding with purpose _ , she thought.  _ Neutral expression. Stay away from others, that’s the key now _ . She effortlessly steered herself quietly down the lowest-priority hallways with the least number of people. She needed time to think. There had to be another way out. Nat just wasn’t thinking clearly. She was rattled at her own mistake. She wouldn’t have let this happen only a year ago. Her new boss Fury warned her this could happen, he’d seen it before. She couldn’t let switching teams make her soft like this. Mistakes still got good guys killed too. She needed to get her head back in the game.

Suddenly, out of a side door flew a swarm of jungle green fabric and black fingerprint-resistant metal, all aimed at her. Natasha made the instantaneous choice of not taking them out as they positioned themselves. She stood her ground as seven large men with AR-47s surrounded her entirely. 

But these weren’t the type of men paid to think. They weren’t decision-makers. Someone else sent them for her. Natasha guessed the very slight scent of vanilla on the air now belonged to the decision-maker, and not any of the men surrounding her. Her guess was confirmed as fact when honey-blond hair flashed on the other side of the guards. Then two of the guns parted.

A vanilla-scented, no-nonsense type stepped toward her, and Nat’s heart involuntarily raced again. The woman before her had the subtle but telltale signs of someone trained thoroughly in hand-to-hand combat, but she also hid it well under a delicate feminine facade. The formidable figure had her long hair pulled straight back into a very careful bun, her bronze skin set off by a cream-colored blouse she wore under a gray pantsuit. A.I.M.’s crooked mining company had made incomplete attempts at a respectable middle management presence, and this woman must have been a part of that. She even had hipster glasses on. Her gaze bore into Nat, and for just a moment Natasha felt downright flush.

“Oh my goodness!” Nat put on a nervous giggle. “This is sure awkward. We’re wearing the same blouse! One of us should probably change.”

The decision-maker eyed Nat with a set jaw, and spoke Spanish in a thick local dialect. [“Miss, you’ve strayed far from the general’s office. That’s the last place you’ve been today that you had any permission to be.”]

[“I’m... very sorry,”] Natasha replied in earnest but purposefully uneloquent Spanish. Her mind worked scenarios for riding this train of suspicious companionship to some better situation than she’d been in. But all the calculating hadn’t gotten her to a solution yet. So she stalled with an air of confusion. [“Being new here... and all the noise and loud... I am so turned around.”]

[“I realize you bring glad tidings of potential support from your German sources.”] The decision-maker’s face remained tight and suspicious. [“But unless you can provide them immediately, you have no need to be in this part of the compound. Certainly not during a possible emergency.”]

With that, the woman extended her arm authoritatively to suggest a direction for Natasha to go. Nat let herself be ushered away, surrounded by the guards. She suspected that - of all the people around her now - the woman present would give her the biggest run for her money in a fight.  _ Why place a fighter in a mid-level administrative position _ , she wondered. She was curvy and feminine enough for her training to be not so obvious. Maybe she herself had reason to hide it from her superiors.

Nat watched her surroundings and considered her choices. The woman was close enough to grab. But she was - at best - middle-management, and would hardly do as a reliable hostage with the soldiers. The halls were wide enough so far that they didn’t give her much advantage for a bottle-up. And she still didn’t have an exit plan. 

The hallways, she noticed, were still rather ordinary and administrative in function. They weren’t near the compound’s brig, not yet.

The blond woman shifted herself to the front of the guards and waved a pass card in front of the security terminal outside a nearby office. Then she gave instructions to their armed escorts.

[“Bring her in here. And honestly, she won’t be this much trouble, boys. You and you, inform the general we’ll be holding her in the basement until such time as brig personnel can join us here. I’ll call them.”] The two guards left as she continued emphatically. [“You four return to guard the armory immediately. There’s too much chaos here for my comfort.”]

More guards gone. Now Nat and the decision-maker shared the room with one big goon, who closed the office door. 

As soon as he turned back toward them, the decision-maker was in place with a sucker punch. That was all it took. Natasha stepped clear of the quickly fallen guard and cocked an eyebrow. 

The blond with the magnificent swing held a halting gesture up to Nat, to suggest they stay silent for the moment. Nat didn’t object, fully expecting there to be surveillance around.

The woman spun toward a wall in the office she’d chosen and quickly began shoving a large, just barely mobile shelf of file boxes out of the way. Nat joined her and they both grunted the shelf across the floor slowly.

When the decision-maker was happy with the wallspace they had cleared, she produced an item from a hidden pocket and fastened it to the wall. Natasha decided very quickly that she wanted some distance between her potential rescuer’s wall decoration and herself. The woman joined her across the room, and they watched as the wall ruptured and disintegrated, leaving an empty space behind. 

They sped down the passageway that had been opened, decision-maker first. Getting past the debris of the explosion didn’t do much to clear the path, as the passage was made of old, crumbling brick. When the woman decided the time was right, she removed another item from the same pocket and threw it over Natasha’s shoulder, the direction they had came. As Nat felt the passageway behind her break and collapse, she very much hoped the way forward was clear.

As they jogged down the shoddy, old brick outlet - sometimes choosing between multiple intersecting passages - the decision-maker spoke very authoritatively, in English.

“Agent Romanoff, I'm Agent 13, SHIELD First Defense Infiltration.” 

“I thought my backup was stationed in the armory.”

“Agent Patil, formerly of the armory, is MI6. They’re the only other Western intelligence bureau that’s managed a presence here. I’ve been the SHIELD agent on site here for two months.”

“Two months. And I thought I was getting bored with this place.”

For a few more silent minutes, they climbed their way through the dirty passageway, until Nat saw bits of sunlight. They pressed hard against a decrepit metal door until it gave with a loud scrape, and found themselves deposited near a dry ravine on the north side of the compound.

“Even if they realize they should give chase,” Agent 13 offered, “they won’t immediately think to look for us on this side of the compound. We’ll have a head start, if we’re quick. Did you keep the package on you?”

“I’m a hands-on kind of girl.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed impatiently. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

“If they get a lock on us, I’ll prioritize giving you an out. You’ve got multiple options for transmission?”

“I do.” It had been a while since Natasha had worked with this type. “You’re seriously ready to leap in front of a bullet to get me out of here, aren’t you?”

“No,” she said icily. “But my job is getting that data you have through to our bosses. And I will take a bullet for that. Isn’t that what you signed up for, too?”

_ Oh dear _ , Natasha thought.  _ The dutiful type. _

Agent 13 didn’t wait for Nat to answer her question. She looked up across the barren horizon in front of them and started giving suggestions that felt a lot like orders.

“We’ll stay away from the highways, of course. We can head straight north past Tierras Prietas, carefully past Hwy 2 and up into El Llanto. We have a number of different exit possibilities from there, once we check in and know better what’s going on. At least it’s a windy day, good probability of our trail being minimized. We should stay in the wilderness as long as possible.”

“Agreed. I wish we’d had time to grab supplies though. That route is hardcore desert for a while.”

“I dropped a stash not far from here.”

“You think of everything.”

“I try to,” she said.  _ Wait _ , Natasha thought.  _ That wasn’t smugness in her voice just then. That was… earnestness. Dutiful and earnest. Wow. _

Nat followed Agent 13’s lead, down away from their exit door, to the northwest. It was already sweltering, but at least it was early morning. They had a few hours before the heat started in earnest.

After walking behind her for about ten minutes, Nat realized her gaze kept being drawn to Agent 13’s hips. “Say. Agent 13. What is your name, anyway?”

The woman threw a quick glance over her shoulder at Nat… quick and enigmatic enough that Nat wasn’t sure how to read it. Was it playful? Or was there something else going on? She still found Americans hard to read sometimes.

They were approaching a large boulder. Nat noticed something right at the edge of the shadow past the boulder, and soon realized it was the corner of a secured tarp. The stash she mentioned.

“If we’re going to walk our way out of this arid wasteland,” Nat said, “I hope you’ve got a lot of water and a lot of ammo. I wouldn’t say no to body armor either. They’re bound to notice our mess and our absence soon.”

“Well, it’s not much, but it’s what I could get my hands on.”

Agent 13 got to the edge of the tarp, and pulled. Nat reached the far side of the boulder and realized it hid a small jeep loaded with several bags of supplies.

“Alright,” smiled Nat. “Agent 13, you’ve definitely bought yourself some time before I torture your name out of you.”  
  


**45 miles north of Tierras Prietas, Chihuahua; about three hours later**

The jeep bumped along in the dirt, with no one but the two of them to notice so far. The vehicle was open-air, but at least it gave some shade and speed. Nat’s fancier undercover hairdo was downgraded to utilitarian ponytail, Nat having lost patience with it shortly after leaving the base. Agent 13’s bun held, but was certainly beginning to strain under the weight of the wind. 

“It’s ideal for our next step,” Agent 13 called out over the rush of wind. “No one will find us there.”

“You’re suggesting that we can upload our sensitive data with help from a magical oasis, located in the hot dust of an international border burdened with truly world-class levels of armed political tension.”

“You’ve got it.”

“El Llanto. Doesn’t the name of this place translate to ‘crying’?”

She nodded. “That’s fairly accurate. Look, it is, in fact, mostly dust. There’s nothing there. There’s no *there* there. Which is why my friends have managed to fly under the radar so long.”

Nat paused. “And our presence won’t cause them trouble?”

“Not with an approach from this direction. Nobody’s looking.”

Nat was skeptical of that but nodded. “Then let’s try your little Burning Man Jr. hot spot.”  
  


**Undisclosed location in the El Llanto desert region, Chihuahua, Mexico; two hours later, midday**

Nat was impressed. And grateful.

She enjoyed a delightfully air-conditioned tent, while Agent 13 talked with a short, round woman named Inez about their communication needs and the camp’s extensive networking capabilities. The other person present went by Maria. It was soon clear to Nat that Maria was responsible for the camp’s stealth prowess, eluding immigration and security forces of two countries and hiding a remarkable level of technology. 

So far, Nat had ascertained that about seven people - several of which were school friends of Agent 13 - had built a completely portable, high-tech camp from which they coordinated extensive, illegal rescue and transport efforts for refugees needing safe passage into the US. 

Nat had never before seen this kind of wealth and technological know-how invested in actually helping people who couldn’t pay for the services provided. It was extraordinary.

With the camp’s encryption measures in place, the data was transmitted to Fury. In the meantime, Nat and her new partner borrowed the camp’s shade and cooling system to endure the heat of day.

“I’m going to check a dead drop I have and see what I can find.” Agent 13 settled into a canvas folding chair with a tablet in her hand. Nat enjoyed a cool bottle of water while she surreptitiously watched Agent 13 frown in concentration, and catch a loose lock of hair between her fingers to replace behind her ear. 

Nat eventually wandered away to examine the landscape out a nearby window. A few minutes later, Agent 13 suddenly grabbed her arm.

“What the hell is going on?”

“What?”

“You were supposed to obtain the financial data for the A.I.M. operation.”

“I did.”

“Then why does SHIELD also have the complete blueprints and inventory of the compound we just left and nearly a dozen others?”

Nat shrugged. “Seemed like useful information.”

“That wasn’t the job.”

Natasha furrowed her brow at her. “Why stick to the assignment if a better opportunity shows up?”

“Because sticking to the assignment is your job!”

Nat wasn’t up for a debate on morality with a stranger, so she sought to redirect. “How’s your guy? Patil?”

“He’s NOT my guy, and there’s no sign of him. He’s either captured or gone to ground.”

“Okay.”

“NOT okay! You don’t get it, do you? We were going to hand this over to the Mexican government and let them handle their own business. But with the additional intel, the US government isn’t going to miss the chance to barge in and-”

“Ohhh, that sounds like some people are gonna be pissed.” Nat took another sip of water.

“Do NOT be flippant about this!” She looked ready to take a swing at Nat as she clenched her hands at her sides, stepped back a pace and paused to breathe. “I don’t believe this. This should have been handled internally. We never should have been here.”

“Come on, Agent 13. One regime or another, what difference does it make? This A.I.M. system that’s been preying on people will get shut down even faster this way, and a lot of people will get out of terrible situations. Wasn’t _that_ the job?”

The agent glared at her.

“Look. We’re both alive. Some bad guys lost. Let’s call it a win.” 

She looked away from Nat and chewed her lip in thought.

Nat lit up. “You know what we should do?”

“I can’t wait to hear,” she deadpanned.

“Road trip.”

She clenched her jaw at Nat. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Like you say, it’s a sticky situation. There could be multiple unhappy parties here. We go straight home now, show up at the office with loose ends untied, they might be looking for someone to blame.”

She stared.

“We get unexpectedly delayed a few days while the diplomatic business gets sorted-”

“Diplom… this is an international incident!”

“I think that’s an exaggeration. It’s really more like a slight change in procedure.” Nat worked to redirect again. “Look, we’ve done the groundwork. Right or wrong, it’s done. Let the bureaucracies fill out their paperwork now. Kick back while we have the chance.” Nat held her gaze while she took a sip of her water. “Oh! I bet we could get to the Grand Canyon from here pretty easily.” Nat smiled her silkiest smile. She’d really prefer not to say goodbye yet. “I’ve never seen it, have you?”

Nat’s new partner still had her jaw clenched. But she had stopped yelling, and her shoulders had moved back down an inch or so. She had the faraway look of a woman deep in thought. She had turned away from Nat almost completely, but her breathing was slowly evening out.

Finally, she looked over her shoulder at Nat and sighed. If Natasha didn’t know better, she could have sworn the agent glanced at Nat’s rack before coming to her decision.

“Well,” she said in an irritated voice. “I apparently have a couple of days to squander.” She took another breath. “And no. I haven’t seen the Grand Canyon.” She pursed her lips together and rolled her eyes. “I was supposed to go when I was sixteen but I got mono.”

“Mono. That’s rough. From a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

Agent 13’s eyes narrowed. “You’re nosy.”

“I’m a spy.”

For a split second, Nat saw real, deep fatigue flash across her new partner’s face. She was quick to cover it again.

“Look,” Nat offered. “I’ve got some cash I can access in Ciudad Juarez. We find some fresh IDs and just slip back across the border there. If you wanna split up then, you could head just about anywhere you wanted.”

Agent 13 looked a bit more relaxed as she gave Nat the once over again.

“It’s safer that way,” Nat offered. She knew it probably wouldn’t be any safer than either one of them on their own. But it could be more fun. 

Agent 13 nodded reluctantly. She smiled a tiny smile, enough for a small dimple to form on one side. Nat thought she might need to sit down for a minute.

 

**El Paso, Texas, USA; the next morning**

Nat was sure she’d never picked up a package of beef jerky for purchase before. And yet, there it was in her basket now. 

Somewhere between the desert and the border check, Agent 13 launched into various historical facts about places in between their current location and the Grand Canyon. By the time they checked out of the hostel the next morning, Nat was sent for dried beef snacks for a road trip.

She also grabbed chips, salsa, peanuts, four hot dogs with accompanying condiment packets, donuts, and an assortment of bottled sodas and sports drinks. She was pretty sure there were some useful nutrients in some of the items.

And now she found herself in front of the gas station’s ice cream freezer.

A few minutes later, the Senior Agent in Charge of Food hauled her purchases across the street to the used car lot, to locate this little adventure’s Head of Transportation. 

Most of the lot was rusty, dusty sedans. But Nat passed an only slightly beaten up ‘92 Camaro.  _ That could work for a road trip _ , Nat thought. She also saw a Mustang convertible... which was a smidge tempting, even though it was from Ford’s 80’s-tastic years, and mostly just looked like the dullest sedan ever had misplaced its roof. Nat thought it would still do for a spur-of-the-moment road trip. It had the requisite spirit about it, and it had a decent engine. 

On these wide open roads they’d be taking, Nat was in the mood for speed. She hoped Agent 13 had found something with some fire in it.

As that last thought formed in her head, a vehicle came round the corner of the rental office, and Natasha noticed Agent 13 driving it. She stopped in front of Nat, smiled and waved from driver’s seat of a Mercedes Sprinter Cargo Van.

_ A cargo van _ .

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“No! And I got it at a steal!” Whatever deal Agent 13 got was enough to propel the woman out of the driver’s seat with excitement. 

It was finally Nat’s turn to shake her head in bemusement. “A cargo van? For a road trip?”

“Of course, silly, save on hotel rooms. We can sleep in the back!”

“Right. Yes. Good,” she muttered to herself as Agent 13 climbed in the back of the van. “Because nothing is sexier than truck stop showers.”

Nat brought her purchases around the back of the van, and passed them up to an agent still very pleased with herself. Nat thought the van smelled of particleboard and sweat.

They found their way to a department store, gobbling down the hot dogs on the way. A pile of blankets and a few essentials later, and they were sitting in the van arranging their stuff.

Agent 13 had two sodas in her hand and was trying to bury them in the ice of the cooler, when Nat noticed she kept having trouble. 

“Oh,” said Nat. “Yeah, the drinks could go in there too, I guess.”

“What’s in…” She looked at Nat. “Are these popsicles?”

“Of course. It’s hot out.” She took the box out of Agent 13’s hands and started investigating their available flavors. “It was this or those weird little orange things.”

“Pushups?”

“That’s it.”

“Oh man, that takes me back. I can hear the ice cream trucks of my childhood. Yeah. Good call. This is better.”

“Thirt. May I call you Thirt?”

“No.”

“Thirt, here’s where our new partnership is truly put to the test. How do you feel about the flavor purple?”

“Well, I’m glad to see you have correctly ascertained the importance of this issue.” She gravely furrowed her brow. “Because purple… is the best flavor.” 

“You are the perfect partner. You can have every last one of the nasty purple ones.”

“Yes!”

“We ready for the open road, then?” Nat asked.

“We are-- oh wait! No, there’s one more stop in town we have to make!”

 

**San Jacinto Plaza, El Paso, Texas, thirty minutes later**

Agent 13’s navigational style seemed to operate on a need-to-know basis, and sometimes it squeezed the driver’s ‘need-to-know’ window a little thin. A driver with a weaker constitution might have found it taxing. But Nat hadn’t hit any pedestrians yet, and the van cornered surprisingly well at inappropriate-for-turning speeds. She couldn’t quite remember why Agent 13 didn’t just drive them there, but she was enjoying herself.

“Romanoff, there’s a holy place I must visit anytime I make it to El Paso. Now, I’ve got to warn you. it’s a lot to take in. That feeling you get, deep down, looking at the Great Pyramids. The Coliseum. You know what I mean? That gravitas? You need to prepare yourself for that.”

“I’ll work on that.” Nat tried to get most of the natural aloofness out of her voice, so her statement didn’t sound sarcastic. She wasn’t sure she succeeded. 

“We’re looking for the Plaza de Los Lagartos.”

“Lagartos. Got it.”

“I really thought it was… oh, oh! Over there!”

Nat pulled in closer, then brought the van to a stop to take in the majesty of the moment. They both walked reverently to the plaza fountain.

Agent 13 pointed to part of the statue. “I named that one Phil. After my friend. Phil.”

Nat gazed upward reverently. “That is definitely the most beautiful plexiglass statue of a pile of alligators I’ve ever seen. I’m deeply moved. In a spiritual way.”

“I knew you would be.” She grinned in a self-satisfied manner.

 

**Interstate 10 near Gage, New Mexico, 120 miles west/southwest of El Paso; three hours later**

Nat still drove, which gave her partner radio duties. After flipping through a few stations, she landed on a mariachi station.

“Oh my goodness,” said Nat. “Just when I thought this road trip couldn’t get any more raucous, you went and found us a polka. Calm down there, Agent 13.”

“Hey. I like mariachi.”

“Who are we listening to?”

“Uhm, Mariachi Cobre. I think.”

“You think? Uncertainty isn’t your style.”

“Honestly, if it's not a favorite band of my mother's I don't pay much attention. She loved Mariachi Vargas and Los Camperos.” Nat had no idea who she was talking about, but the agent’s voice had gotten warm and wistful and she was enjoying it. “I listen when I miss her.”

“Was she from around these parts? Even I could tell you had that local accent down really well.”

“Terlingua, not far away. Big Bend region of Texas. I still have family there.”

“Best spies up and down the Rio Grande, I'm sure.”

Agent 13 laughed. It was a pleasant sound. “They’re all schoolteachers. I get the espionage from my father's side,” she explained. 

Nat glanced over and realized that with a full-on smile, the agent had the most heart-breakingly amazing dimples she’d ever seen. Nat managed not to wreck the van.

“Well,” Agent 13 continued. “Even between El Llanto and Terlingua there's distinctions in dialect. I did my linguistics undergrad thesis on the developments of pidgins and creoles along geopolitical borders, and the Chihuahua-US border was one of my focal points." She tilted her head and gazed out the window. "I grew up here. Here and Virginia."

“You’re awfully chatty for a spy.”

“Ugh. My last boss went on and on and on about how i talked too much. Anyway, I’m off the clock.”

“If you’re off the clock, then what's your name?”

“That stream of information operates on a need-to-know basis,” she smiled. Then she demanded. “Why don’t you recall it from my dossier?”

“I didn’t see any dossiers, I told you. I thought that guy in the armory was my deep backup. I was just guessing and improvising. They told me nothing.”

“Ah,” the agent said wryly. “Well. Good to know my two months of intel gathering wasn’t wasted.”

 

**Interstate 10 near Bowie, Arizona, 200 miles west of El Paso; 90 minutes later**

“Tucson. Romanoff. The Pima Air and Space Museum is in Tucson! We should go. They have 300 historically significant aircraft. Over 4000 decommissioned planes. My god, the history.”

Natasha looked up from her comfortable slump in the  passenger seat to take in more of Agent 13’s nerdery.

"I had a friend,” she continued. “An aircraft historian, she worked with the Pima Museum at one point... to try and reconstruct the plane Captain America was flying when he was killed.”

“Who?” Natasha interjected distractedly.

Agent 13 stared at her. She probably didn’t mean to be looking at Nat quite that way. But Americans got so sentimental about their celebrities.

“Oh right,” Natasha tried to say a bit more respectfully. “The guy with…” She struggled to describe what she knew. “...with the flag.” She nodded gravely.

“I mean,” Agent 13 continued, “a virtual reconstruction of the craft. At first. But eventually a mock-up. They never quite got the whole thing funded. But the eyewitness accounts they found were extraordinary. It had to have been a massive aircraft to carry the artillery Red Skull intended to transport.”

“They never did find the actual plane, did they? Or… America’s remains?”

“No,” She said quietly. “Very sad.” She had a faraway look in her eyes for a few seconds, then shook her head. “We don’t have to stop.”

“No, it sounds important to you. We should stop.”

She thought a beat before she responded. “No. The timing’s not right. Some other trip.” She nodded her conviction.

 

**Saguaro National Park, just west of Tuscon, Arizona, 330 miles from El Paso; two and a half hours later**

“That’s definitely a cactus,” Nat said.

“Yes.” Agent 13 studied it.

Nat looked around some more. Agent 13 noticed.

“This isn’t quite your thing, is it?”

“You enjoy. I’ll be over here… counting cactuses.”

Agent 13 chuckled. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“We can’t go yet, none of them have exploded with spiders.”

“... sorry?” 

“You know, the hoax, the exploding… never mind, doesn’t matter. Yeah, let’s go.”

Back in the van, Nat pulled out the map and perused it.

“Oh yes! Here’s our next stop: Arizona City, Arizona.”

“Okeydoke,” Agent 13 said.

  
**Arizona City, Arizona, 375 west/northwest of El Paso; one hour later**

Nat got out of the van, looked around the parking lot, and nodded wisely.

Agent 3 joined her, also looking around.

“You’re nodding like this is what you wanted to stop for.”

“It is, basically.”

“It’s... a gas station parking lot.”

“Yes.”

Agent 13 had clearly given up any expectation that Nat would make sense on the regular, because she didn’t even looked surprised or confused anymore. She just stared at her semi-patiently, waiting for Nat to wander backwards into an explanation.

“I’ll explain over food.”

Ten minutes later, they were squeezed into a diner booth that smelled vaguely of cheese.

“We’re over food,” Agent 13 said. “Now explain.”

“It’s not that important. I just got hungry.”

“Look if it’s personal, you don’t have to tell me a story you don’t want to.”

“It’s not personal. I just… don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“... now who’s behaving uncharacteristically?”

Nat leaned back in the booth and looked out the window. “Look. American-ness is a thing right? ‘What does it mean to be American,’ that gets asked quite a bit, right?”

She nodded. “I suppose.”

“It was the same in Russia. Same but different. It was never a question there, though. Every single Russian has an answer to that.” Nat shrugged. “Every one has a different answer, but that’s kind of beside the point. Or maybe it isn’t.” Nat picked her burger back up. “It always seemed so elusive to me. A definition of Russianness. What is the essence of America? You know. Things like that.”

“So, city names that contain the state-”

Nat leaned in again. “Well it’s almost like they must be hiding a secret, right? To be named the same thing twice. It expresses some essential quality of the place, distilled right out of the air. Or the land. Boiled down to some essence.”

“Hm. Almost like cubism.” 

Nat shrugged dismissively. “It’s also a nearly random point on a map, so there’s that too.”

“Do you feel the same way about New York City?”

Nat frowned. “Mm. Something somewhere must explain New York CIty, but I don’t think it’s this particular theory.”

Agent 13 chewed thoughtfully.

Nat smiled, a bit embarrassed at her ramblings. “We were looking for somewhere to be. This point looked slightly more alluring than the next one over.”

“Oh, well. If that’s all.” Agent 13 eyed Nat and took a swig from her bottle of cold soda.

 

**Interstate 10 rest stop, mile 183 near Sacaton, Arizona, 400 miles from El Paso; 30 minutes later**

“That was it. It was over. He left the chess club. And… he left me.”

Nat moaned in sympathy.

“It broke my heart,” said Agent 13.

“That’s brutal.”

“That’s middle school. I listened to Jewel’s ‘Foolish Games’ on repeat for three days straight.”

They sat in the back of the van, gathering their snack wrappers to throw away. It was late… and they needed rest. Tonight they were just two travelers at a roadside stop, camouflaged by the darkness and the ordinariness of the situation. 

They rearranged the blankets and pillows into cramped sleeping quarters on the floor of the van by the light of an electric lantern. With the supplies shoved against one wall, they found the space snug, but workable.

“Now, wait a minute,” Agent 13 said as she pulled a blanket across herself and laid on her side. “I think I’ve told a dozen stories to your one.” She eyed Nat suspiciously. “I know very little about you.”

“I’m an open book,” Nat said.

‘Ha!”

Nat tilted back onto a pillow without availing herself a blanket. “What do you want to know?” she asked, staring at the ceiling.

“Tell me about about *your* first love.”

“Oh, I could tell you that,” Nat smiled. “But then I’d have to kill you.”

The agent shifted closer, the contours of her bare arms backlit by the lantern behind her. “You do realize that is the most overplayed spy joke in the history of spy jokes?”

“Old spy jokes never die. They just grow a bad moustache and move to Brazil.” Nat paused to hide her gasp at Agent 13 showing her dimples. “And you of all people really can’t knock old spy games. Who here is being coy with her name?”

The woman tilted her mouth and said nothing.

“You do know,” Nat said, “that with five minutes of work - max - I can learn it.”

“Of course.” She smiled. “So I have to stay mysterious as long as I can, don’t I? Until you lose interest.”

“Who says I’m going to lose interest?”

“Hm, we’ll see.”

“I’m going to get it out of you.”

“Oh, will you?”

Natasha nodded. “Yeah,” she said with determination. Then she leaned into Agent 13, enough to feel the woman’s chest suddenly rise and fall. Nat pressed in, reached past her, turned the lantern off and fell back into her half of the dark sleep space.

Though they both stayed quite still, it was some time before Nat fell asleep.

 

**The I-10/1-17 interchange in downtown Phoenix, Arizona; the next morning**

“Goodbye Interstate 10! You were good to us!” Agent 13 pulled her head back into the cab. “Do you ever think about what happens to a road when so many travelers take it?”

“You mean like deterioration?”

“No, no. I mean… we just added our story to that space of road. So many people have traveled in that same space. Just something to think about is all.”

“I’m still not sure what the something is.”

“I’ve got an idea. Keep driving.”

 

**Sedona Arizona, detour onto Hwy 109, 120 miles north of Phoenix, Arizona; two hours later**

Nat stared at a wall that held floor to ceiling wicker baskets of quartzes. She had never seen so many rocks for sale in one place.  There might have been a million little stones on this wall in this one store.

Sedona displayed some stunning natural beauty, she had to admit. There were dramatic red sandstone outcrops in every direction. And the residents wanted to add to that beauty, or so it seemed. Every corner they’d passed on the way in seemed to have one bronze statue or another. Apparently the residents wanted to sell that natural beauty too, judging from this wall. 

Nat wasn’t sure how she got dragged into an honest-to-god New Age store.

“Agent 13, you really didn’t strike me as the crystal and chakra type.”

She shook her head. “It’s not about whether crystals work. I mean they don’t. But the science isn’t the point.”

“Mind pointing a little more directly at your point? I’m having a hard time finding it.”

“This town cut a Roman Catholic chapel into the side of one of the bigger rocks around.”

“Mkay.”

“The locals believe there are spiritual vortices around town. The land was popular before all this among several Indigenous tribes, until they were violently run off and incarcerated by white folk, of course.”

“Of course.”

“You tug at these strings... you get into the very fabric of our personal realities. How we make meaning from a chaotic world. There’s something sacred about this, separate and apart from scientific fact. People believe in these things. Humans always have. There’s power in that.”

“So a lot of people get hoodwinked. That doesn’t make it true.”

“But, truth is complicated, isn’t it?”

Nat thought silently.

“My grandmother had a lifelong friendship with her curandera. These were two sensible women with respectable educations. Sometimes an ailment was driven away with a medicinal tea, or with a bag of spices around her neck. Sometimes it was healed through talk at the healer’s kitchen table.”

“So you believe in folk remedies?”

“Believe isn’t the right word. I’m certainly not going to take a cancer diagnosis to a faith healer. At least I don’t think I would. But do you never think about.. things that are bigger than you are?”

“Most things bigger than me are either conspiracies or bureaucracies. Neither are very inspiring.”

“The power is in the meaning we ascribe. So the power is in our hands, in a way. You found Arizona City satisfying?”

Nat thought for a moment. “I did,” she admitted.

“What was it you found there?”

Nat frowned in thought. Then she looked at Agent 13, and nodded silently. She was still pretty sure Agent 13 had it wrong, but she wasn’t entirely sure about what.

 

**Flagstaff, Arizona, 150 miles north of Phoenix; 2 hours later**

“Listen to this,” said Nat. “I just can’t get over this town name. Tuba City.  _ Tuba City, Arizona _ . That’s fantastic. Is the town named after that sexy, sexy instrument? Or is the word derived from another language?”

“You know there’s lots of Hopi and Navajo connections around here. Something that sounds like Tuva is plausible, if I remember their phonemes correctly.”

“We could drive all this way, and then go to Tuba City *instead* of the Canyon. Better story that way.”

Agent 13 laughed. Then she looked questioningly at Nat. Nat couldn’t hold back a chuckle, and she admitted what was probably already all over her face. “I’m actually not much interested in the Grand Canyon.”

“WHAT? This was your idea! We’ve been driving for two days!”

Nat shrugged. “It sounded corny enough to be of interest to you. And it got you to stop yelling at me.”

“Corny? CORNY?” Agent 13 was incredulous, and searched for words. “The Grand Canyon... reveals a BILLION years of geological history! Billion with a B! How can you scoff at that?”

“I am very specifically not scoffing at anyth-”

“The beauty is overwhelming! How can you say beauty is corny?” She seemed personally offended.

“If you haven’t seen it,” replied Nat, “how do you know it’s beautiful?”

Agent 13 huffed at her. Twice. “I’ve seen photos. We’ve all seen photos. I don’t have to go there to know the Grand Canyon is beautiful.”

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t go. We came all this way. I’m just saying. The destination wasn’t the most important part of this for me is all.”

Agent 13 muttered, nearly to herself. “It’s a holy site of the Pueblo People. And it’s romantic.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“Well,” Nat said. “Now that’s an interesting word to use.”

 

**Grand Canyon Village, 80 miles north of Flagstaff (and 40 miles west of Tuba City); 2 hours later**

They both sat on a bench together in stunned silence. 

In front of them was a long, winding, deep slice into the earth, with more shades of red and brown than Nat ever thought might exist. Thousands of years of rock and water had made its own vast world that opened at their feet, unlike anything Nat had ever seen. She felt both disoriented and strangely calm.

They had sat down on an empty bench, away from the crowds, maybe twenty minutes ago. And somehow they hadn’t spoken yet. 

Natasha was pretty sure she didn’t have an optimistic bone in her body. But the beauty in front of her was immense. And it felt good to look at it. She realized in another hour or so, the sun would be low in the sky. She realized she very much wanted to watch a sunset here. And she very much wanted to watch it next to Agent 13.

“That feeling you get,” Nat said. “Deep down, looking at the Great Pyramids. The Coliseum. That gravitas.”

Agent 13 turned her smile to Nat, and seemed to examine her a few moments. Finally she asked, “The wifi work in the gift shop?”

“M-hm.”

“You hear from Fury?”

“Yup. All clear. He wants us in our superiors’ offices tomorrow afternoon for our next orders. Transport is arranged for each of us from the Flagstaff airport tomorrow morning.”

“Any idea what your next assignment is?”

Nat shook her head. “Something undercover somewhere. Can’t tell yet exactly how annoying it will be… but apparently tomorrow is also my photoshoot for my cover ID’s previous modeling career.” Nat rolled her eyes. “Can’t wait to see whose attention that is supposed to grab.”

“Oh, very glamorous. I have a stun gun that fits in a bra if you want to borrow it.”

“That sounds very useful.” 

“So, what do you want to do on your last night as yourself for a while?” She smiled at Nat. Natasha was pretty sure Agent 13 was deliberately using those dimples as a weapon to make Nat swoon. And it was working. 

Nat spun her head around, taking in the darkening blues of the sky, the gravity of the canyon near them, and the growing warmth between the two women sitting so near each other. She drank in her partner’s curves and the light in her eyes, and thought over her answer. Finally, she said, “I want to appreciate beauty.”

Thirt gave her an unguarded giggle that made Nat woozy. “That is such a line.”

“I’m way past relying on subtle.”

“That doesn’t excuse such a terrible line!” She laughed.

“It’s only terrible if it didn’t work.” 

She met Nat’s gaze.

“Did it?”

Agent 13 looked in her eyes. 

With one hand suddenly cradling the back of Nat’s neck and the other firmly taking a fistful of her shirt, Agent 13 pulled Nat in and kissed her. The full length of their bodies brushed each other as their tongues met and lingered. It was warm and cool all at once - playful and earnest at the same time.

They pulled apart, but Nat immediately took Agent 13 back in her arms and pressed their lips together again. If the first kiss was like dipping a toe in the water, this kiss was a dive down deep. The heat electrified the air between them and stretched down into Natasha. Nat held back from biting her lip - just barely - and when they parted again, they pulled away and took a moment to find their equilibrium.

“My name is Sharon,” Agent 13 said as she licked her lips. “If you’re kissing me like that now at a national landmark, you should probably know what name is appropriate to be crying out later.”

“You’ve got a solid procedure for intel administration, Sharon.”

“You know what I’m craving?” Sharon asked.

“Mmm, popsicles?”

“No.”

“Corndogs?”

“I.. no. Why would you even guess that?”

“I’ve been craving one ever since you indignantly repeated the word ‘corny’ seven times.”

“It wasn’t seven times.”

“Oh, I know!” Nat exclaimed. “A shower stall that doesn’t smell like a gas station?”

“That’s the one. I’ve got a bit of cash I can get to in Flagstaff.” Sharon’s voice took a musical, mischievous tone. “Let’s get a hotel room.”

Nat smiled. “Deal. After the sun sets.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the ride! Comments and conversation warmly welcome.
> 
> Don't be surprised if Nat and Sharon find another chance to take a road trip together...


End file.
